


The Confessions of Christine Daae

by kildeer



Category: Love Never Dies - Lloyd Webber, Phantom of the Opera - Lloyd Webber
Genre: Canon Rewrite, Coney Island, F/M, Fanfiction, Fanfiction of Fanfiction, Fluff and Smut, Hotel Sex, I've become obsessed with fixing Love Never Dies, Infidelity, Love never dies, Music, Musicals, One weekend that changes everything, Performance, Phangirl Trash, Phantom of the Opera - Freeform, Romance, Shameless Smut, Smut, Team Christine, baby daddy drama, christine daaé - Freeform, the most soap opera trash I have ever written
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-26
Updated: 2020-02-26
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:00:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22902844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kildeer/pseuds/kildeer
Summary: In September 1907 internationally renowned opera singer Christine Daae comes to Coney Island to make her American debut, performing one song for the mysterious impresario, Mr. Y. The true purpose of her journey, however, is a closely-guarded secret, and over the course of one momentous weekend her life, and the lives of those closest to her, will be changed forever.
Relationships: Christine Daaé/Erik | Phantom of the Opera, Raoul de Chagny/Christine Daaé
Comments: 20
Kudos: 105





	The Confessions of Christine Daae

_Friday, September 6, 1907_

I am standing at the dining room window, staring out into the blackness beyond the streetlamps. It has stopped raining but the pavement is still wet and puddled, raindrops scattered across the window like smooth little gems. I am standing with my arms folded tightly in front of me as though I am trying to hold myself together, even though my corset is still doing that work for me. In spite of the fact that I have been desperate to take it off for hours now, I find that I cannot stir myself from this vigil at the window. 

It is so quiet here. For the first time in this long day I am as close to alone as I can be, and it is _quiet_. I did not make it to the window in time to see whether my husband exited the hotel and, if he did, in which direction he headed. He will not drink here in the hotel bar, not after we were seen entering the lobby together. He will seek out a less conspicuous venue, one with cheaper liquor and dim light, certainly, but also one that is not too far from the hotel. He knows he will have to find his own way back, no matter what condition he is in. If Coney Island really is as wild and extravagant as it is rumored to be, there is a very good chance that he will find an establishment which never closes, whose proprietor will be all too happy to take his money for as long as it lasts. 

I can no longer hear the faint melody of Gustave’s music box and I hope this means that he has fallen asleep. I am aware of the rose which I added to the wildflower bouquet in the sitting room. I have not ceased to be aware of it. In my mind’s eye, it glows and pulses with red light like a petaled beating heart, silent and alive and equally aware of me. With a brisk, decisive movement I turn away from the window and go to the sideboard. I pick up a clean glass from the drinks tray and unstop the damned crystal decanter which weighs as much as an infant. The amber liquid within has almost reached the lip of the bottle, Raoul left so little behind that I am on the verge of upending it, when I force myself to pause. I take a deep breath and carefully pour a much smaller measure than I had intended. I replace the stopper in the mouth of the decanter and slowly bring the glass to my lips, thinking, _I am going to drink this. I am not going to drink any more than this._

The whiskey goes down like syrup, the kick of its heat catching in the back of my throat and making me cough, before I determinedly tip my head back for the rest. It has been three years since I last drank, a glass of red wine at a party thrown in my honor after a performance in Vienna. It is the fashion among certain snide gossip columnists to paint me as a teetotalling saint, a demure angel with the golden voice to match. _She must be an angel,_ one reporter commented blithely, _to have been so loved by a devil._

I force myself to put the empty glass down and walk away from the sideboard, trembling. The rose is waiting for me in the sitting room. The song is waiting for me in the sitting room, bound up in its red leather folio. The obvious answer is to go to bed. _How will I be able to sleep here?_ I ask myself. _It’ll take more whiskey than what I just drank._

That is when I hear it.

A click.

A single, soft mechanical _click_ from my bedroom, the door to which is just barely ajar. I can feel my heart beating in my ears, the residual heat from the liquor girding my spine. For a fleeting moment I consider taking up the decanter like a blocky cudgel in my hands, but then the bedroom door is coming closer, and I watch as my empty hand reaches out to push it all the way open. My first thought, absurdly, is that I am glad I do not have the decanter, because I know that at this moment it would have fallen from my hands to the floor with a sound like the breaking of worlds.

Erik is standing in my room.

Of course he is.

The double doors to my balcony are open, carrying fresh air through the room, and I can hear the cascading hiss and suck of the ocean. Erik looks as though he has just come from the opera, the premiere performance of something haunted and Germanic, full of blood and ghosts. This cannot be real, and yet it is.

He is here.

Just as I knew he would be.

I step into the room and silently close the door behind me. He does not move, but his black eyes follow me.

“Christine-”

If he says more than my name in this first utterance I am not aware of it. A physical, _lurching_ sensation seizes my lungs at the sound of his voice and I must step back because a moment later I am pressed against the closed door, my hand covering my mouth in an effort to suppress whatever mortifying sound threatens to escape it. He starts to take a step towards me and I raise my finger in warning. He stops at once, looking nervous and _oh God help me, this is really happening._

“I knew it,” I whisper, “I knew it would be you, even before I saw your damned mask plastered over everything.”

The corner of his mouth tightens. He is standing very straight, his arms held rigidly at his sides, and he lifts his chin with a hint of defiance.

“And yet you still came. This was, in fact, _your_ idea.”

His voice is low, rich, and measured, a strong and unerring hand contained within a deceptively soft glove. 

“We need the money, clearly,” I say, willing myself to believe that were I not braced against the door I would be able to remain standing on my own. I can feel both his frustration and the effort he employs to contain it.

“Is that the only reason?” He asks. 

“What other reason would there be?”

“Unfinished business, perhaps,” he says solemnly, “Between us.”

 _Us._ I am beginning to feel lightheaded and wish that I had not waited to take off this godforsaken corset. At the same time, it is gratifying to know that my dominant emotion at this moment is anger. Pure, bracing, _clarifying_ anger.

“I would say that you finished our business rather definitively last time.”

I am somewhat surprised but even more glad to see him flinch, his facade of haughty confidence faltering. I continue, feeling my voice grow stronger and working to keep it reined lest we should wake Gustave.

“Were you planning to explain yourself further? Or at all?”

He averts his gaze from mine.

“I had hoped-”

“ _You_ had hoped,” I echo incredulously, “What about _my_ hopes, Erik? When a nineteen-year-old girl comes to you in tears, practically on the eve of her wedding, and begs for your love, do you take even a moment to consider her feelings or her future beyond satisfying your own desires?”

I am pleased to discover that the door is no longer supporting me, that I have in fact taken two steps towards him. One more and he will be forced to give ground. I can see it in the set of his shoulders. He still will not meet my eyes.

“I wasn’t-”

“You weren’t what? Intending to hurt me? Intending to despoil me and disappear like the phantom you tried so hard to make me believe in? Those were not the actions of a ghost, Erik, nor an angel, nor of a tragic, mistreated genius. They were the actions of a _man_ , a cowardly, selfish man, no different from any other leering and tossing out coins for the dancing girls.”

His head snaps up, his eyes suddenly sparking with indignation.

“You were always more than that.”

I put my hands on my hips, ready to shout in his face. It feels good to be angry like this; satisfying, easy, and so much less painful.

“I don’t need you to tell me my own worth. You abandoned me as though I meant nothing to you.”

“And I have regretted it _every hour_ of _every day_ for the last ten years,” he says forcefully. We are standing less than three feet apart now, whisper-shouting at each other, and I am not going to give an inch. He is starting to crack and I want to watch him disintegrate the way I did that morning all those years ago when I woke up naked, sore, and alone in his bed.

“Then why did you do it?” I demand.

He does not answer right away, and as we stare into each other’s eyes I am alarmed to feel a stirring of desire within me, announcing itself bluntly with no acknowledgement of my will. I push it away at once, but I cannot similarly dismiss the echo of this treacherous need which seems to flicker in Erik’s eyes. In a complex doubling back of awareness, he realizes that he has lingered too long upon my face and that I have noticed. It feels as though literally anything could happen, and a voice in my head is adamant that I need to put distance between us _now_ , but I refuse to acquiesce.

Then something unexpected happens. Erik yields, taking a step back and then another, lowering his head, his shoulders hunching as he turns away from me. It is not the kind of retreat I have become accustomed to with Raoul. It is not one of anger, resentment, wounded ego or patronizing indulgence. Erik’s retreat now is one of shame, shame so powerful that it feels like an immovable weight on the back of your neck. I recognize the look. The past ten years have taught me more about shame than I ever imagined I would have the misfortune to learn. 

“When I woke up,” he begins, the veneer of command and surety stripped from his voice, “it was still dark. The candle was guttering, about to burn itself out...” 

I shiver, remembering that candle and how it had gone cold by the time I woke. Erik goes on, and I can hear his throat tightening.

“You were still asleep-” his words fall away for a moment and he gives a small bewildered shake of his head, still not looking at me, “you were the most beautiful thing I had ever seen...the most beautiful thing I could _imagine_...and all I could think about was the way your face would fall when you opened your eyes and saw me.” 

He smooths his hand absentmindedly over the back of his wig the way he does when he feels exposed and is trying not to show it. 

“But there was more to it than that,” he goes on, “I was, I _am_...a murderer, fleeing my just punishment. I will never be able to walk by your side in the light of day. That night...your life was just beginning and mine had no right to continue. I could think of nothing more selfish, more monstrous, than to cripple your future by binding it to mine.” 

It is fortunate that we are not facing each other as he concludes this speech; I know I would not be capable of smoothing my features into an untouchable mask. The doors to the balcony are still open and the bedroom has grown cold. My heart longs to weep. _Is this what I’ve waited ten years for?_ That first morning, when I did not yet know that my life had become the aftermath of a single calamitous night, my thoughts flew on a nightmarish carousel of speculation. I imagined that Erik had only ever wanted my maidenhead, that he had been part of some vast criminal conspiracy, that he had stepped outside and been instantly assassinated, erased from the face of the earth, and yes...I also imagined him saying the words he has just spoken to me. Many times. This is, in fact, one of the better scenarios I concocted for his disappearance and one which I chastised myself harshly for. Hearing it now, spoken as the most definitive truth he can manage...am I satisfied? Vindicated?

All I feel is heartbreak.

What is worse, my limping overtaxed organ does not seem capable of clarifying its desolation any more precisely than that. I simply _ache_. Erik draws a shuddering breath and I know that he is crying. He does this silently, wonderingly, as though after a lifetime of grief he still does not fully understand what is happening to him when he weeps. I experience a profound desire to wrap my arms around his ribs and rest my cheek against his back. As I step forward I realize that this is exactly what I am about to do, and my head swims with the insanity of such an impulse. I must not touch him. I do not know what will happen if I touch him. Although the room is of a generous size it suddenly feels small. Forcing myself to any action alternative to taking Erik into my arms, I walk past him out onto the balcony, feeling as though I am moving within the thick airless atmosphere of a snow globe. I glance over my shoulder to find him watching me, his unmasked eye still wet around the edges, his expression unguarded and fearful. With a small tilt of my head I invite him to join me. He does, and we stand at opposite ends of the exquisitely beautiful railing in the light of the odd swooning flower lamps, looking out into the late summer night at the island, which finally seems to be settling into rest, and the great city beyond the bridge. 

“Thank you for telling me,” I say quietly.

“You're welcome,” he says, sounding lost and wrung out.

I open my mouth to speak, then close it again, thinking.

“You should know,” I say finally, carefully, “that I recognize the gravity of what I wanted from you that night. I didn’t at the time, of course, but in the years since...I have had thoughts very similar to the ones you just expressed. It’s almost impossible to imagine that I would be where I am now, that I would have been able to build my career, if we had stayed together.”

It is not an easy thing to admit, but I feel as though we have traveled centuries of time and space in the last few minutes and I am weary to death of this day, of trying to pretend or perform anything but the truth. 

“We made our choices, Erik, whether mistaken or not. If nothing else, I hope that you and I can have a certain measure of peace now,” I turn my head to look at him, “I think we’ve earned that.”

He seems to have regained some of his equilibrium, bracing his hands against the railing as he regards me with melancholy thoughtfulness. 

“May I...ask you a question?”

My heartbeat quickens, just a little. Even after everything we have spoken to each other tonight there are still fortress walls which I must maintain, and I am prepared to lie to him even if I do not want to. I swallow.

“You may.”

“If I hadn’t left, would you have stayed with me?”

I almost laugh, but the sound is caught like a butterfly in the web of tears clotting my throat. 

“Yes,” I say, the word little more than a whisper, and he stares back at me as devastation quietly falls over him. 

_To my ruin I would have stayed_ , I think. _You were so much more than a lover. You knew me, in a way that no one ever has, and I did know you._

The ocean alone speaks in the silence between us and I feel as though I will choke on everything I want to say to him.

_We loved each other and you abandoned me._

My soul is upon the precipice as I feel the pull to speak the final, most important words.

_You abandoned me, and I bore your child._

~

_Saturday, September 7, 1907_

Gustave is so tired by the time we return to the hotel suite that he is weaving side to side a little as he walks, his eyelids already at half mast. He goes straight into his room, collapses onto his bed, and makes no protest when I bend down to remove his shoes and shift him underneath his covers as I did when he was a small boy. He lies on his side and snuggles into his pillow, his dark hair, which is still as soft as it was when he was a baby, falling across his forehead. I kneel next to his bed for a moment, watching him sleep in the lights of Phantasma. I remember how much he had wanted to stay up to watch the fireworks and I hope he will be able to see them tomorrow night after the concert.

_Last chance…_

I find myself trying, as I have so often in the past, to see in my son what Erik might have looked like as a child if fate had been kinder to him. Gustave has my eyes, but beyond that he looks very little like me, and nothing like Raoul. Resisting the urge to kiss his cheek (I do not want to wake him), I get to my feet and silently retreat from his room, closing the door carefully behind me and pausing for a few moments to make sure that I hear no movement. I then go into the sitting and dining rooms to make sure that both of the doors leading to the central hallway are locked. I am certain Raoul still has his key. If he does not, then he can suffer the humiliation of having to ask a member of the hotel staff to let him in. Even when he can barely remember his own name, he knows better than to approach our bed when he comes home drunk after dark. I go into my room and close the door.

The first thing I do is unlace my boots and pull them from my grateful aching feet, setting them neatly next to each other on the floor of my wardrobe. I unbutton the front of my dress, my fingers moving automatically after a lifetime of practice. I do so envy the simpler garments of men, or even of the brazenly underclad showgirls here on Coney Island. _What would it be like,_ I wonder with a thrill, _to move through the crowds in broad daylight wearing nothing but sequins and feathers?_ Corset unlaced, I continue to shed cloth until I can touch my skin again, gently massaging my sore ribs and breasts and tender spots where the stiff seams of my clothes dig in. I choose a long nightgown made of pearly white silk which leaves my arms bare, a pleasant restless ache stirring inside of me as it slides down over my body. My bathrobe is silk as well, China blue and embroidered with cherry trees in full blossom, their petals cascading across the fabric. Once I have gone through the laborious process of taking my hair down, I brush it methodically until it is gleaming and feather soft, falling to my diaphragm. I am about to start plaiting it when a movement in my periphery makes me turn to see the shadow of a man standing on my balcony.

I do not start or cry out, because I am not surprised. Of course he would come tonight. I know the balcony’s double doors to be locked, but I am sure that no lock yet invented poses much of an obstacle to _the Master of Coney Island_ , certainly not the ones installed in his own hotel. He waits outside now like a proper gentleman caller and it occurs to me that today’s revelation has humbled him. It has humbled both of us. I glance up at myself in the mirror to see that the color has risen in my cheeks. Once again I am gazing into the eyes of a nineteen-year-old ballet girl who wanted nothing more than the excitement of throwing herself into danger and romance. 

_Have the last ten years altered me so much?_

They have. Of course they have. I know that I will never be that girl again. _Thank God._

I watch my reflection in the mirror a moment longer, then rise and walk to the curtains, pushing them aside. It is still astonishing to see him here in front of me, just as it was last night and this afternoon at his concert hall. After so many years, he is real again. He wears his long black coat as before, but I can tell at a glance that the outfit beneath was given little consideration; no tie or cravat, the first three buttons of a white shirt unbuttoned, collar crumpled, his false hair falling loose over his forehead. I am pleased to see that he wears no makeup tonight, even though without it he is alarmingly pale, almost as bloodless as his mask. He stares down at me. 

It has been so long since I have felt seen in this way. His eyes are the color of the darkness between stars and just as bottomless, filled with so much more feeling than seems possible for a mere human heart to withstand. He is the only person I have ever known to possess such a tireless engine of creation and thought.

 _Look at everything you’ve done,_ I want to say to him. _Look at the humanity you have managed to find within yourself. And yet here you stand on my balcony, looking at me with the same naked plea as when you were little more than an animal. Are you sure this is what you want?_

As if in answer to my unspoken question, he presses the palm of his right hand to the door’s glass pane, lowering his eyes in a kind of deference as he waits. I raise my left hand, imagining I can feel his skin through the glass as our fingers align.

 _We’ve both changed,_ I think. With my right hand I unlock the balcony door.

I step back, my hand falling away from the glass, and the childlike surprise on his face shifts into something decidedly less innocent. He opens the door and steps inside. I stand in the center of the room, my hands clenched tight within the long sleeves of my robe.

“Gustave is asleep in his room,” I whisper, a reminder and warning for both of us.

He closes the balcony door soundlessly while I lock the bedroom door and hastily move a chair, wedging its back up underneath the door knob.

“Raoul?” He asks.

“He knows not to disturb me when he comes home,” I hesitate, “ _if_ he comes home.”

A complex mixture of emotions flickers across the visible half of Erik’s face. Anger, regret, uncertainty, hunger. I step forward and take him by the back of the neck with both hands. It seems clear that he has not been touched in some time; for a fraction of a second I can feel the uncertainty of his body, but then his arms are around me. Whatever unknowable mystery decreed such powerful affinity between us, it has not seen fit to temper it in our years apart. If anything it burns more forcefully.

As I tilt my head to kiss him my nose bumps awkwardly against his mask and I pull back, lifting it from his face with an impatient, “This gets in the way.” He is startled but barely has time to respond before I wrap my arms around his neck, free to kiss him now as deeply as I want to, and I hear myself whimper into his mouth as his arms wrap around me again, his strong hands running over my back and through my hair. I am unbuttoning the rest of his shirt when the fireworks begin. Launched from the grand pier which juts almost a mile out into the ocean, they travel over the water before they burst, their sparks melting upon the waves. As Erik undoes the sash of my bathrobe, green, yellow and red lights travel from one window of my room to the other, catching the large vanity mirror as they go and creating the illusion that the fireworks are happening in the room with us, which I suppose they are.

Our first coupling after so many years is an understandably urgent and awkward affair as we try to relearn each other’s language while navigating our own desires. I am also perpetually aware of how much noise we might be making, and send up a distracted prayer of gratitude for the grandiose cacophony of the fireworks. It is only because of them that I allow myself to moan when Erik enters me, his face buried in the crook of my shoulder as his fists tighten in the bedding.

“Is it as good as you remember?” I whisper, eyes closed as I begin to move around him, unable to help myself. He suppresses a groan in turn, kissing my neck as he begins to move inside of me.

“Better,” he says, and the sound of his voice in my ear makes me feel as though I am already on the verge of shattering. Neither of us lasts very long, and I have barely crested my own climax when I quickly prompt him to withdraw from me before his own release takes him. He acquiesces, spilling himself rather gracelessly onto my thigh and apologizing almost at once. I kiss him, coaxing him to lie back on the bed next to me. Once my breathing has settled I look over and grin at him before rising from the bed, feeling _new_ in a way that I have not since Gustave was born. I go into my bathroom to clean his seed from my leg, and when I’ve finished I stand in the entryway, dressed only in colored light, watching him watch me. I cannot deny that I feared he would disappear while my back was turned, but he is still here, and he holds an arm out to me from where he lies prone and exposed in my bed.

Almost an hour later we are still curled together, my head resting over his heart as he holds me to him, the pair of us drifting in and out of drowsy blissful slumber. The fireworks have long since stopped and Phantasma has gone dark, leaving only the lamp posts along the boardwalk. I find myself reluctant to let go of him, or to fall asleep completely in case this reunion evaporates as I suppose all things must in _La Maison des Fantasmes_. At least now, this time, I am no longer the girl who expected her lover to pull down the moon and carve it into a castle for two.

“When did you realize that Gustave might be mine?” Erik asks.

“I’m not sure...it came to me gradually,” I hesitate, wondering how much I should say, before deciding that I have not traveled halfway around the world to be coy with him. “When Gustave was about to turn three, Raoul and I decided that we wanted to have another baby,” I brace myself for a visceral reaction to the sound of my husband’s name, but Erik is very still, listening, and I go on. “So we began to try, but after almost two years we finally accepted that it wasn’t going to happen.” My heart sinks at the memory. “It was confusing and frustrating for both of us, especially since I had gotten pregnant easily before. I married Raoul so quickly after...after you left, that naturally...I always assumed Gustave was his child. After we stopped trying, Raoul’s sister recommended that he visit a doctor, and I was seized by a fear I didn’t understand at first, but...thankfully he scoffed at the idea, and I’ve never pursued the issue.”

The two of us are silent for a moment, and in that silence I can hear the ceaseless movement of the ocean against the beach. _Let us be like the ocean,_ I think. _Rolling and crashing and always returning like this._ I keep talking.

“We began falling away from each other after that, he to drink and the gambling hall, me to my fear. The more I looked at Gustave the stronger my certainty became. He has an irrepressible curiosity, an instinctive understanding of how to take things apart and put them back together,” I can feel Erik smiling as I speak, his heartbeat quickening with pride and happiness at these thoughts of his child. _Our_ child. _Yes,_ I think. _Love him. Please love him as utterly and hopelessly as I do._ “His affinity for music comes so much more naturally to him than mine ever did to me,” I look up at Erik, seeing only the unmarred side of his face from this angle, “He has your smile,” I murmur, seeing it at last.

Our second lovemaking is much different from the first. We are slower and more sure of ourselves, the smooth grace of accomplished swimmers leaving behind the enthusiastic splashing of novices. He surprises me by moving to the end of the bed and settling on his elbows between my thighs. I have heard allusions to such activity in ribald saloon chansons but have never experienced it for myself. As I cover my mouth with my hand to stifle my sounds of pleasure I feel almost giddy at the blunt carnality of what he is doing. It is one thing to have the deaf, dumb and blind male member between my legs, but this is his _face_ , his eyes and nose and mouth and tongue brought to the most sensitive and unflinchingly honest part of me, and the intimacy of it is overwhelming.

“Where did you learn how to do that?” I ask as he emerges, looking triumphant and flushed with arousal.

“I read about it in a rather, um, _specialized_ book from the Far East,” he says, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand before he halts and looks up at me, a trace of poorly disguised worry in his eyes. “Was it alright?”

I grin and reach for him, feeling too limp to sit up.

“Come here.”

He obeys and for the first time I taste myself as we kiss, pressed down into the bed, and I am so happy and exhausted and drunk on this satiation of my senses that I feel almost delirious. I roll him onto his back and guide him inside of me, as smoothly as a blade into its most perfectly matched scabbard. I rise and sink over him, arching my back and fondling myself until he is driven to sit forward, one arm held tight around my waist, the other braced on the bed behind him as he pulls at my nipples with his lips and tongue. I try to keep moving, to never _stop_ moving, until I grow impatient with our positions and push him back down onto the mattress so that I can have him as hard and fast as my body needs me to. When my orgasm takes me it feels as though it unfolds with the exquisite craft of a symphony, sparking with overlapping colors, writhing in upon itself before suddenly opening again, wider, deeper, sending an echoing tremor through my body which feels as though it will never end. I am lost to time, gradually returning to my heaving lungs and sweat-dampened skin, my hair sticking to my back and shoulders, and the panting, exultant man beneath me.

We must get some small amount of sleep, because when I surface dim indigo light is filtering in through the curtains, a slow turn as though dawn were emerging from the solid depths of a marble, carried upwards from the bottom of the sea. We lie side by side in the twisted linens, bed heavy and humid from the determined pursuits of our bodies. Erik is on his back, sound asleep, the edges of his hair piece askew, his handsome face slack and restful. It occurs to me that I have never seen him in the full light of day, my midnight demon lover. My teacher. My confidant. My soul’s dark twin. I shift to lie on my side, one arm beneath my head, and watch him sleep. _How old is he?_ I do not think he knows. I only ever tried to ask him once and he slipped the snare without answering. I have always assumed that he must be older than Raoul and I, but not as old as my father at the time of his death. My father passed away when he was fifty-four years old. I study the lines which have deepened in the left side of Erik’s face, feathering from the corner of his eye and gently cupping the corner of his mouth like the luckiest parenthesis. _Could he be fifty-four now? Older?_ A thought is waiting, has been waiting in the shadowy wings of my mind for her cue to step out onto the stage and address the audience, but I am still not ready for her entrance. I prolong my solo in defiance of the script.

It is not too much longer before Erik stirs and opens his eyes, blinking at the unfamiliar ceiling, and I observe the brief twitch of confusion between his eyebrows before he senses my gaze and turns his head to look at me, an expression which could very accurately be described as awe, and just as accurately as humility.

“What time is it?” He whispers.

“I don’t know,” I say, “Early.”

He looks back up at the ceiling, deep in thought.

“Were you not intending to wake up here?” I ask.

“That’s not it,” he says at once, his expression earnest, then soft as he looks at me. I smile, feeling at once melancholy and filled with light. _Who knows when love begins,_ I think. _Who knows what makes it start? One day it’s simply there, alive inside your heart._

“Erik?”

“Yes.”

“Did you…” I hesitate, feeling perilously close to the thought which is waiting to be spoken, “Did you build your concert hall for me?”

He does not answer right away, but the quiet sadness on his face is unwavering in its eloquence.

“Yes and no,” he says, his eyes traveling along the strands of my tangled hair as though he longs to reach out and follow them with his fingertips. “I never thought you would actually perform in it; I didn’t dare to hope that I would ever see you again, but...I did want to make something that would be worthy of you.”

I lean across the space between us to kiss him once, gently, before I pull back, gazing into his eyes as I run the pad of my thumb over the shallow cleft in his chin. Even now, I can feel some deep fundamental part of him squirming under my attention. I have always sensed this paradoxical struggle within him, even before I fully understood its genesis. He burns to be known, to be understood and loved, but after a lifetime of abuse he cannot help but flinch, an insidious, tar-gummed voice in the back of his mind prophesying pain. I remind myself that while this is certainly still the case, that this is part of who Erik is and always will be, he has not kidnapped or coerced me here. He is not on his knees vowing to rain down almighty bloodshed if I do not give him what he wants. Somehow, against all odds, we seem to have finally met each other halfway. With this thought as my guide rope, I ask him, “If you truly did not expect me to come to you, why did you send me the song?”

“To apologize,” he says, “I had tried to push the past away, to move on and find something... _anything_ else to consume my time and thoughts, but I was finally forced to recognize that if I didn’t create something out of what our suffering had taught me, if I didn’t share it with you, I wouldn’t be able to go on living,” he pauses, swallowing, “I needed you to know that I loved you then, and that I still do.”

Before I can turn away from him I am weeping, pressing my face into the pillow to stifle the sound. I feel Erik shift on the bed and his arm wraps around me, carefully, as though he is sheltering an injured bird.

“I didn't mean to make you cry,” he says quietly, running his palm over my quaking back, “I’m sorry, Christine…”

“You don’t need to be sorry,” I manage, shaking my head, “I can no more stop loving you than I can stop the moon from rising, and I _tried_ ,” my voice breaks on another sob, “for myself, for my marriage, for my career, for my son, I have tried, but it was no use. And the worst part,” I raise my head to look at him, “the _worst_ part is that I don’t regret what we did. I never have.”

He does not speak but holds me closer, his face pressed into my hair, breathing with me as I cry myself into stillness. 

We make love one last time before he leaves, in almost perfect silence as the world beyond the walls turns cerulean, gentling to dove grey. I lift my leg over his hip as we lie on our sides, both of us too exhausted for anything more acrobatic, and he holds it there, his fingers curling around the back of my knee. I hold onto his waist and hips as we move together through the tidal pull and push of our sex, breathing hard between kisses, our mouths swollen red. 

After he is gone I draw a bath for myself, blissfully content behind my locked doors, greedily savoring these last moments of privacy in the afterglow of our long night together. There is a basket of fresh rose petals on the floor next to the tub and I add them to the hot water, sinking in up to my eyes and grinning helplessly where not even the daylight can find me. I tilt my head back against the smooth white tub, playing the night in my head like a piece of music I am practicing, straight through certain sections while pausing over others, whether to contemplate their challenge or simply languish in their beauty. I repeat them as many times as I want while my body swells and tightens in response, held by a lullaby of warmth within the generous womb of the tub.

The horizon of my reverie suddenly opens outward, and in a breathtaking panorama I feel as though I view the entirety of my life; every tear, every hungry night, every barefoot dance for the coins of strangers, every page of music, every jealous slight, every leering man, every moment of passion and despair and pain and love, until the whirling carousel settles on a moment not even twenty minutes past: Erik, framed against the sighing ocean and a sleeping island empire in the predawn light, messy hair falling in his eyes, at least one button missed in his rush to do up his shirt, leg thrown over the side of my balcony like a well-seasoned Romeo, pausing to look back. He smiles at me, and for the first time I see nothing more nor less than a man, flesh and blood, solid through. Somehow, this is where the course of my life has led me; to an amusement park on Coney Island where the man I love is climbing down the side of his own hotel, his skin still warm from my bed. I laugh out loud and dip below the surface of the water completely, so unbearably happy that I feel as though my body is in danger of turning itself inside out. 

The thought which I have been avoiding for so long (in truth I have been avoiding it since I first opened the oxblood folio and began reading _Mr. Y’s_ gift song) finally strides out onto the stage as I break the surface of the water, and her song, which I had anticipated as a battle cry to shatter the foundations of my life, instead breaks my heart with the sweet simplicity of its hope.

_What if I could be with him?_

~

_Sunday, September 8, 1907_

Once the door to my dressing room has closed behind Gustave, Raoul steps forward, holding out his offering, and the moment is surreal, as though we are attempting to reenact another dressing room, another rose, another pair of childhood sweethearts. I take the rose from him, trying to prepare the lines I have been rehearsing all day in anticipation of this moment, while simultaneously distracted by the most irrelevant thoughts. _Where did he get the rose? Where has he been hiding all day? What humiliations did he endure to achieve sobriety?_ Because he _is_ sober; after so many years I can tell at a glance by his eyes and the way he moves. We exchange pleasantries like automatons; I compliment his appearance and he compliments mine, but inevitably I feel his intention to shift the conversation, his restlessness, and a sense of grim resignation settles in the pit of my stomach. From what Gustave told me of Raoul’s conversation with Erik and the deal which was struck, I have been trying to anticipate how my husband will attempt to charm me over to his side and the audacity with which he will obfuscate the truth. However, I am mildly surprised when he opens the conversation with a denouncement of his own performance as a man, a father, and a husband. In spite of everything, it saddens me to hear the genuine self-loathing in his voice now that he is sufficiently motivated to speak honestly, without the poisonous barbs of resentment and apathy which have drawn so much blood from us. He is approaching the crux of his argument, the one last favor I must grant him if there is any scrap of our marriage worth fighting for, and I gently pull my hand away from his, stopping him before he can speak the words.

“I’m sorry, Raoul, I can’t allow you to continue.”

He frowns, his eyebrows coming together in confusion.

“What do you mean?”

I place his rose upon the makeup table, watching his face carefully.

“We’re not alone.”

His expression darkens in comprehension and I turn to look around the room at the mirror, the costume closet.

“Come out, Erik,” I say, my voice calm and authoritative, “It’s long past time that the three of us speak to each other as adults.”

I wait with my hands on my hips, determined to be unassailable, and out of the corner of my eye I can see Raoul’s hands tightening into fists. _So be it,_ I think. _As long as we settle this._ Less than five seconds later there is a muffled unlatching sound, then a slight creak as a narrow panel of the wall opens like a door and Erik steps into the room. Raoul takes a step back, and I can feel his rage building like a sunburn on my skin. Erik is dressed in an all-black tuxedo, free of ornamentation save a subtle pattern of tiny black and cobalt sequins along the edges of his full cape. _Of course,_ I think, _the peacock has arranged his feathers to match mine._ I stand between them as they glare at each other, and I have never been so ready for a confrontation in my life.

“It’s come to my attention that the two of you have been haggling over me as though I’m a side of beef at market,” I pause, simultaneously gratified and incensed to see the surprise on their faces, “Do either of you deny this behavior?”

In almost perfect unison they look away from me and I feel like a schoolmistress, ruler in hand, preparing to dole out punishment on boys who have deliberately smeared each other’s chalkboards.

“What were the terms of the wager?” I ask, determined to see whether one or both of them will lie. Neither of them answers, until finally Raoul says, “How did you-”

“It doesn’t matter how I know,” I say firmly, cutting him off. “What matters is that you were planning to manipulate me for the sake of money and your own egos, which must have the structural integrity of eggshells.”

Erik has still not met my glare, and Raoul’s jaw is working silently. I can feel my husband’s anger towards Erik battling with the embarrassment of exposure. He must also be reflecting bitterly on the effort he put into preparing for his thwarted wooing. I have no time for any of it.

“Just so we are all perfectly clear,” I say, my voice hard as stone, “I am not some parcel to be bartered and sold. I decide what happens in my own life and in the life of my child, and your inclusion in our lives is my prerogative alone,” I look between them, feeling inviolable and liberated, “ _Do you understand me?_ ”

“Yes,” Raoul mutters, his neck and face flushed. Erik meets my eyes and nods, looking thoroughly abashed.

“Good,” I say, “Because I want a divorce, Raoul.”

As red as it just was, Raoul’s face now slowly drains of color as he stares at me. For a moment he looks lost, giving a small disbelieving shake of his head.

“What are you..? You’re not serious.”

“I am,” I say, realizing that I have just said the words out loud with no intention of taking them back. I have known Raoul longer than anyone else in my life. It feels strange, in fact, to remember the comparably brief window of time during my earliest childhood when I did _not_ know him. He is the man I married and into whose arms I placed my newborn son. He is the man who bruised my wrist yesterday. He is a man who fully understands the depths of his own failures and drinks because he cannot bear to live with this knowledge. I approach him now, unwilling to disguise the grief I feel for him, for both of us, for the wreckage and fleeting joy we have known together.

“We’ve made each other so unhappy, Raoul. It’s time to let go.”

He shakes his head again, and I am dismayed to see tears starting in his eyes. I would have been better prepared to deal with his anger. 

“Ten years...more than ten,” he says, his voice rough, “What’s it all been for, Christine, if we give up now?”

Tears have started down my cheeks and I wipe them away, shaking my head in turn.

“I don’t know. We tried...we both tried, but I can’t anymore.”

“What about Gustave?”

I draw a quavering breath.

“Gustave has said...that he wants to stay with me.”

Raoul blinks at me.

“You’ve already _spoken_ to him about this?”

I nod, biting the inside of my bottom lip and wishing, for Raoul’s sake, that Erik was not in the room with us.

“He’s my son,” Raoul says, his voice barely above a whisper, and as I look into his eyes I know that he still believes this, that whatever poison Erik may have ladled into his drink-heavy mind this morning, Raoul has always believed that he is Gustave’s father. _This is the price,_ I think as I feel my heart splinter within my breast. _This is the price you will have to pay for your freedom._ I hold my hands in front of me, determined not to touch him. Any attempt I make at gentleness now will only compound the base cruelty of what I am about to do. 

“He’s not,” I say, the words barely limping through my tears, “He’s not your son.”

He takes a step back from me, unsteadily, wiping his face with both hands.

“You can’t know that, how dare you even suggest-”

“I thought he was, Raoul, I swear it on my father’s grave. I wanted him to be yours, but then when we were trying so hard to have another baby-”

He runs his hands through his hair before lowering them to his sides, his eyes puffy and red-rimmed now, the severity of his expression making me falter.

“Say it,” he commands, his voice flat and brittle as slate, “Look me in the eyes and tell me that you cuckolded me with _this,_ ” he points his finger at Erik without looking at him, “kidnapping, charlatanic _murderer,_ Christine.”

His overt insult to my character does not sting me as he wants it to. After all, I cannot begin to calculate the number of times I have immolated myself upon the altar of Erik’s misdeeds in the private hell of my own mind. There is little heat left in those ashes now. I look Raoul in the eyes as requested.

“That is what I did.”

Raoul has gone very still and his arm lowers to his side once more. From across the room I can feel Erik’s tension balanced on a knife’s point and I pray that Raoul does not move to strike me. No matter how much atonement Erik has made over the years, I know he would kill Raoul now without qualm. The anger and betrayal in Raoul’s face are threaded with revulsion.

“Who _are_ you?” He asks. I take a deep breath, trying to draw strength from the certainty that we are at last approaching the end of this torment. Soon there will be nothing left to say.

“I am nothing more nor less than I have ever been.”

“ _No,_ ” he says, “this is not the-”

“Not the _what,_ Raoul? Not the child you saw singing in the village square? Not your Little Lotte running across the beach with her red scarf? You’re right, I’m not that girl anymore, because I _never_ was. Whatever enshrined icon you may have had of me was only ever a glamour, as illusory as the image of a prima donna printed on a thousand souvenir postcards.”

“So it was all a lie?”

“No,” I reply steadily, “It was just never the whole truth.”

He stares at me, his expression settling once more into profound sadness until finally he gives a weary shrug.

“What on earth do we do now?”

“I think you should go home. My solicitor will be in touch within the week to begin discussing the terms of our separation.”

“Dear God,” he murmurs, “You really mean to do this.”

“Yes.”

His eyes seem to lose their focus, darting a little before landing on his top hat, which he had set down on my makeup table upon his arrival, his gloves laid just so across the brim. He picks up his hat and gloves slowly, stiffly, like a wooden figure on an antique clock.

“Actually...I’ve already booked passage. My ship leaves in…” he checks his watch, “just under two hours, so I’ll be collecting my things from the hotel now.”

I blink at him, my heartbeat skittering a little in surprise.

“Now? Will you not wait a moment for me to find Gustave?”

He has already started to turn away but I see his face contort at the sound of the name.

“No,” he says, “If he is not immediately outside this room I won’t trouble him for a goodbye.”

“Raoul, _please,_ ” I protest, control slipping as I remember the fear and uncertainty in Gustave’s eyes. I can already feel his sense of abandonment as though it is my own, “None of this is his fault. You’re the only father he’s ever known.”

Raoul looks up at me and the anguish in his eyes cuts me to the quick.

“All the more reason to make myself a stranger.”

He appears to collect what little remains of his aristocratic dignity and levels one final unfathomable look at Erik before he leaves the room. I make no attempt to stop him. In the brief moment between the door’s opening and closing I hear distant applause from Phantasma’s audience and a stage manager announces ten minutes until curtain. Oxygen returns to the dressing room slowly. Erik looks as though he has weathered a perilous storm. I feel wind-burnt and scraped hollow.

“You will never go behind my back like that again,” I say.

“I swear it.”

“You will never presume to exert your will over me without my consent.”

He lowers his head.

“I promise, Christine.”

“Between you and I there must be equity and fidelity in all things if we’re going to have any chance of building a life together.”

He is still for a moment, then looks up at me, his eyes wide.

“‘A life together’,” he echoes, as though he has not fully understood the meaning of my words. I brush away my tears and give him an exhausted smile.

“If that’s agreeable to you, of course.”

His face softens with slow-dawning joy.

“It is,” he says.

Minutes later I am standing in a darkened wing of the stage, waiting as the stagehands prepare my custom backdrop, a radiating mandala of blue peacock feathers. My appointed makeup girl hovers at my side, hastily reapplying my lipstick as she tries to quell her blushing smile (it was her interruption which forced Erik and I to disentangle from each other’s arms in my dressing room). With characteristic geniality, Erik has stolen himself away to some secret perch where he can watch my long dreamed-of debut upon his stage. I can feel his presence with me now the way I used to in Paris, and again I am taken by the thought that time has circled back upon itself. Perhaps this is where we were always meant to begin. 

Renewed applause breaks out from the other side of the drawn curtain and I hear Mistress Gangle begin my introduction. The stagehand called Hank is standing nearby and I ask him whether someone is available to find Gustave to make sure he does not miss my performance. He smiles with a “Right away, Madame,” before hurrying off, and a hush falls over the theater. It is my cue and I hear the heavy whisper of the great black curtain being drawn aside as I step out onto the stage, momentarily hidden from the audience while the orchestra plays the first long, shimmering chords of the song. There is an intake of breath, felt more than heard, as I emerge from beneath an arch cut into the front layer of my set, bathed in blue light which sparks on the sequins and crystals covering my dress. 

Every performance is a kind of birth. The terminus a quo of inspiration is given life, its form and expression painstakingly crafted until the moment arrives when it must be delivered into the light with no assurance of success, each incarnation unique and never to be repeated exactly. There will never again be this stage, on this night, with this audience, at this watershed of our lives. I gaze out into the vaulted darkness of the auditorium, feeling transformed and ignited by the holy moment of creation. 

_It will never be like this again,_ I think as I take a deep breath.

_It will be better._

**Author's Note:**

> This is a story I never intended to write. My "real" Love Never Dies fic is much longer, unfinished, and told exclusively from Gustave's perspective, working off of the musical's original libretto (Christine isn't tricked into coming to Coney Island, Erik never threatens to hurt Gustave, and I have Gustave eavesdrop on Erik and Raoul when they make The Wager). As I was writing that fic, however, I realized that I needed to know some of what was happening behind the scenes with Christine, just to keep the story threads/character development consistent. It was also fun to get really trashy imagining Christine and Erik's reunion, but I _never_ intended to actually write it down, let alone make it available for other human beings to read (I literally covered my face with my hands as I was writing some of this) so, of course, that's exactly what I've gone and done. As I started writing out my ideas, I was genuinely surprised and delighted to discover that these three scenes were a fairly complete little story unto themselves, and what had started out as smutty trash was actually something I was emotionally invested in. It was deeply cathartic to give Christine agency and make her the protagonist of her own story (in my version of LND she doesn't die!) I definitely want to complete and post my full LND fic someday, but in the meantime I'm proud to have finished this little spin-off and maybe someone else will enjoy it as much as I do :)


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